I’m crashing on a pretty big story this morning, but for now, check out this post of mine from last night about Gen. McChrystal’s top intelligence aide publicly calling out the entire intelligence community for failure in Afghanistan. Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn’s gist is that intelligence is largely irrelevant to the fight, since it’s focused overwhelmingly on enemies and not enough on the conditions among the population that allows those enemies to take root. The result, Flynn says, is that the military and the intelligence community is out of sync. Should reignite some COIN-versus-counterterrorism debates.

Still, Flynn went public with this just days after one of the CIA’s greatest single-day losses of life in its history. I don’t yet know what the intelligence community’s reaction is to Flynn’s move, but his timing is rather questionable; Flynn supporters will surely respond that the urgency of the situation merits a lack of politesse. And I can see merit to both sides of that argument. But whoa. If part of Flynn’s point is to reintroduce harmony to the ISAF/intelligence community relationship, I don’t know if the paper’s timing really helps.

Update: Capt. Matt Pottinger, one of Flynn’s co-authors, clarified to CNN that they’re not really talking about the CIA:

“This is primarily about improving intelligence within the Department of Defense,” he said via e-mail

“Our timing was independent of the tragic event in Khost Province,” he said, referring to the attack that killed the CIA officers.

There’s no doubt, as I wrote in my post yesterday, that Flynn and co. are primarily concerned with military intelligence. But read that paper and tell me if you think there aren’t moments when the critique broadens to certain Other Government Agencies.